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Shooting outside US NSA headquarters; one hurt

Police tape blocks a visitor's entrance to the headquarters of the National Security Agency after a shooting incident at the entrance in Fort Meade, Maryland, on Wednesday (AFP photo)

WASHINGTON — Shots were fired early on Wednesday at the ultra-secret National Security Agency (NSA), the US electronic spying agency outside Washington, leaving one person injured, officials said.

Aerial footage of the scene from NBC News showed a black SUV with numerous bullet holes in its windshield crashed into concrete barriers at the main entrance to the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The images showed what appeared to be police surrounding a man on the ground in handcuffs.

"The situation is under control and there is no ongoing security or safety threat," the NSA said.

"We can confirm there has been one person injured and we don't know how the injuries occurred," an NSA spokesman told AFP.

The local ABC television affiliate put the number of injured at three and said a suspect was arrested.

The Baltimore office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the investigation, said the incident "has been contained".

A law enforcement source told AFP that it was too soon to know whether the incident was an attack on the facility or otherwise.

They are "still trying to ascertain the facts", the source said.

"The president has been briefed on the shooting at Ft Meade," the White House said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected."

'Puzzle Palace'

The NSA is the premier US signals intelligence agency, eavesdropping on electronic communications and hacking computers of US adversaries and suspects worldwide, and also protects US communications and information systems from cyber attack.

The agency was thrust into the spotlight in 2013 when former contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of its global surveillance programmes, including its collection of data on Americans.

Its compound, known as the "Puzzle Palace" — located about 32 kilometres northeast of Washington — is highly secure.

In March 2015, guards at the NSA gate opened fire on an SUV which did not heed orders to stop, killing the driver and wounding a passenger.

The two involved, it turned out, were men dressed as women who made a wrong turn into a restricted lane and may have refused to stop because, it later turned out, there were drugs in their vehicle.

The leading US spy agencies installed heavy security at their facilities after an assault rifle-wielding man opened fire on cars waiting to enter the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters compound in McLean, Virginia in January 1993. Two CIA employees were killed and three wounded.

The man, Aimal Kasi, escaped to his native Pakistan and it took US investigators four years to find him. He was eventually arrested and sent back to the United States, where he was convicted of murder and executed in 2002.

In 2016, a man drove his car into a fence gate at the CIA headquarters, claiming he was an agency recruit. He was arrested but was found to be mentally unstable, and only received 30 days in jail and a fine.

US and British spies hacked into the world's biggest maker of phone SIM cards, allowing them to potentially monitor the calls, texts and e-mails of billions of mobile users around the world, an investigative news website reported.

The US National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

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